By Nornan D. Ford, Health Reporter
In the world's top Citadels Of Longevity, inherited longevity genes and physical activity are emerging as the most powerful factors contributing to a long, disease-free life.
In their search for the keys to longevity, researchers are probing into the diets and lifestyles of places, islands, states and countries around the world. Years ago, we believed that people lived longest in mountain Shangri-La's like the Russian Caucasus, the Hunza region in the Himalayas, and Vilcabamba high in the Ecuadorean Andes.
But more recent studies have found that, while these places do have many active, long-lived people, they were outranked in longevity by certain populations in Okinawa, Nova Scotia and Sardinia. These havens of longevity are merely regions of larger nations, namely Japan, Canada and Italy.
According to the World Health Organization's "Healthy Life Expectancy Rankings," the top ten countries in order of life expectancy were recently: Japan, Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands. Excluding a few tiny countries, the U.S. ranked 18th, partly due to its exercise-robbing lifestyle and obesity epidemic, but also because it is the only modern western nation not to have a National Health Insurance Plan covering all citizens.
According to the Morgan Quitno 2003 Award for the Healthiest U.S. States, the top ten were Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Hawaii, Utah and North Dakota. The lowest ranking ten were Arizona, Georgia, Arkansas, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi.
In the top ten, only Hawaii is a warm-weather state and its high ranking is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the Japanese heritage of so many of its residents. The harsh weather of the other 9 top states may breed hardier people but many more people in these states are more affluent and better educated than those in the South., both plus factors for health and longevity. Yet in North Dakota, many people live to a ripe old age without even having finished high school while their diet, at best, is far from ideal.
But in almost every place on earth where people live long and healthy lives, one lifestyle factor always predominates. Vigorous Daily Exercise--both aerobic and strength-building plus stretching--is the ultimate key to revitalizing both body and mind throughout life.
So let's take a look at some of the world's top Citadels of Longevity.
OKINAWA: HOME OF THE WORLD'S
LONGEST-LIVED PEOPLE
Research into Calorie Restriction has recently focused on the people of the Japanese island of Okinawa which has more centenarians per capita than any other region on earth. For every centenarian in America, Okinawa has 3.5. Research into the Okinawan diet and lifestyle shows that it is only people aged 50 and over who enjoy this enviable longevity record. Why? Because they grew up living the traditional Okinawa way and they continue to practice it every day of their lives. Actually, most Okinawans aged 50 and over follow a diet and way of life that closely resembles the Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan described in this report. They also consume 10-15% fewer calories each day than people living on the Japanese mainland or in western countries.
As a result, the population of Okinawa aged 50 and over has been classified as a World Longevity Region. But Okinawans aged 50 and under have been excluded because they have succumbed to a western-style diet and lifestyle similar to that of the United States. The result? Their health and longevity have already deteriorated and their life expectancy has fallen lower than that of mainland Japan.
A new and interesting book "The Okinawa Program: How the World's Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health and How You Can Too", by Craig Willcox is available from www.amazon.com
SARDINIA--ANOTHER ISLAND OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE
During recent times, the Mediterranean island of Sardinia has also emerged as yet another citadel of longevity. On January 3, 2002, Antonio Todde, at 112 the world's oldest man, died peacefully in his sleep in a remote corner of Sardinia. A shepherd all his life, Todde had lived simply on a typical Mediterranean diet of pasta, vegetable soup, fish and fruit plus a daily glass of red wine. He enjoyed long walks and family get-togethers and had been married to his wife for 78 years. At the time of his death, his 98 year old sister was still alive and well.
Compared with an average of 75 centenarians per million in most Western countries, in Sardinia 135 people per million become centenarians. Because eastern Sardinia has a founder population, in which the present population evolved from just a few hundred original people, any genes for longevity would be widely distributed in the people who are living there now. Currently, researchers from America's National Institute on Aging are teaming up with Italian scientists in eastern Sardinia to identify genes associated with two key traits in aging. One trait is a high level of arterial stiffness, which is an important predictor of high mortality from heart disease. The other trait is positive emotions, which is the ability to experience joy, love, happiness and excitement rather than worry, anxiety and stress.
NOVA SCOTIA'S LONGEVITY BELT
The emergence of longevity genes from a small founder population in an isolated corner of Sardinia was swiftly followed by the discovery of a similar founder population, from which longevity-enabling genes appear to have spread through an isolated corner of Nova Scotia, Canada.
In Nova Scotia's Longevity Belt, centenarians are 3 times as numerous per capita as in the U.S., as a whole, numbering 50 per 100,000 population versus 18 per 100,000 in the U.S., and 21 per 100,000 in Canada. In recent times, this discovery--right on our doorstep in an English speaking country with modern record-keeping and data--has led to the most intense and rewarding study of living centenarians ever made.
Spearheading this study of the extremely old is Dr. Thomas Perls, who researches centenarians for Boston Medical Center, and Dr. Chris MacKnight, geriatrician at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Both have gathered promising facts about Nova Scotia's centenarian population , with evidence pointing to a genetic base for extreme longevity.
Molecular biologists on Perls' team found that many Nova Scotia centenarians share very similar gene patterns along their chromosome No. 4. The scientists believe that one or more age-defying genes are clustered on this spindly chromosome.
Longevity researchers are also intrigued by the fact that the Longevity Belt exists between two coastal towns founded in the 17th Century. Both towns are still populated to a significant degree by descendents of the original settlers who numbered about 25 families in each town. Longevity still tends to run in families and researchers suspect that today's centenarians have inherited a common genetic factor that protects them from some of the most common age-related diseases and dysfunctions.
The two small towns are:-
Lunenberg, a historic seaport and World Heritage Site settled by German immigrants.
Yarmouth, settled by New Englanders. Many of today's population are descendents of the founding families with genes passed down through the generations.
Both towns are relatively isolated with descendents of the original settlers marrying within these communities. Despite a far-from-ideal diet, it's still quite common for members of entire families to remain healthy and active to age 90 plus.
Perls' team discovered that many of the Super-Old have never experienced an ache or pain or seen a doctor or been in hospital. And the majority are much healthier than their age suggests. Statistics show that 40 percent of centenarians avoid chronic illness till past age 85 and another 20 percent until age 100. It's not true that the older you get, the sicker you become. It's the older you get, the healthier you have been. Smoking and being overweight are extremely rare.
Among other traits common to the centenarians are:-
Most are hardy, survivor types, living traditional, physically-active lifestyles in isolated, old- fashioned towns where stress is low.
They are gregarious, good-humored, happy and optimistic and are livelier and more active than the norm.
Most centenarians stay mentally-engaged, typically preferring to study or practice the fine arts rather than passively watching ball games on TV.
Most take an active role in their own health and lifestyle and remain involved with family and friends.
The majority enjoy a basic level of financial security (or better).
Fourteen percent of women centenarians never married.
Among centenarians, women outnumber men 4-to-1 but men are more likely to enjoy better health and to retain cognitive abilities.
And among the siblings of centenarians, a woman with a centenarian sibling is more than 8 times more likely to reach age 100 than a woman without a centenarian sibling. Yet a man with a centenarian sibling is 17 times more likely to reach 100 than a man without one.
While research teams are beginning to identify genes linked with
longevity in the populations of Sardinia and Nova Scotia, it remains
abundantly clear that diet and lifesyle are equally important. So much
so that studies on Sardinia, Okinawa, Nova Scotia and elsewhere are
showing that even if you don't have genes for longevity,
you can compensate by following the
same No. 1 Healthy Lifestyle Plan described in this
website.
California Seventh Day Adventists Actually Longest Lived People
However, measuring the average life expectancy of geographic areas does not take into account population groups such as California's Seventh Day Adventists. The Adventists, who consider Health a Virtue, live scattered among California's general population. But they differ from those around them because all, more or less, follow a much healthier lifestyle based on the Adventist Church Creed.
The Adventist Church recommends an exceptionally healthful lifestyle based on daily exercise and a largely vegetarian diet with abstinence from smoking and alcohol, maintaining a healthy body weight with a BMI under 26 for men and 25 for women, and eating a small serving of nuts almost daily.
A 12 year study of 34,000 Adventists undertaken by Loma Linda University Health Center and published in their Archives of Internal Medicine (July 9, 2001) revealed that Adventists who most closely followed the recommended way of life had an average life expectancy for men of 83.3 years and for women 85.7 years. By comparison, the life expectancy for top-ranking Japan was 78 years for men and 85 years for women.
Clearly, it identifies this segment of an American church group as one of the world's healthiest and longest-lived populations. The study showed that of those Adventists who most closely followed the recommended lifestyle, Adventist men outlived the average California male by 9.5 years while Adventist women outlived the average California woman by 6.1 years.
Lead researcher Gary E. Fraser M.D., Ph.D., said," Our research suggests there is a real potential for other Americans to extend their life expectancy by 5-10 years with relatively simple lifestyle changes."
However, you don't have to be an Adventist to add up to ten years to your Life Expectancy. The optimally-healthy Adventist lifestyle is almost identical with the Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan endorsed by this website.
People Knew How To Stay Younger and Live Longer in 400 B.C.
As far back as 400 B. C., Greek philosophers discovered the benefits of eating a diet of foods that grow on plants. Several philosophers who were vegetarians remained vigorous and active well into their 90s. Down through the years. thousands of men and women have preserved their youth and health through vigorous exercise coupled with a vegetarian diet. But it wasn't until the 1970s that we began to learn why.
From 1970 onward, researchers discovered that it was the fiber in plant foods that keep our digestive tracts youthful and free of disease. But it took until the mid-1990s for scientists to confirm that foods that grow on plants contain powerful anti-oxidents plus anti-carcinogens and other disease-fighting nutrients that help to keep us free of many of the ailments that cause rapid aging. More recently still, nutritionists have learned that the Mediterranean diet, with its oily fish and healthful fats, can also help to slow human aging. This is patently evident in the high rankings of Mediterranean countries like France, Spain, Italy and Greece.
It's interesting, therefore, to read the report below, released by the New York Times in mid-2003. It describes the lifestyle of America's longest-lived people, the residents of McIntosh County, North Dakota. Despite their less-than-ideal diet, the hardy men and women of this isolated county live longer, and are probably healthier, than those of any of the nation's 3,141 other counties.
Here again, the report focuses on the powerful role of vigorous exercise in staying fit and healthy. It also emphasizes how our over-mechanized car-based culture is robbing us of the daily exercise we need to stay physically active and mentally alert in our later years.
North Dakota Town's Payoff for Hard Lives Is Long Life
By PETER T. KILBORN The New York Times
ASHLEY, N.D., July 27 , 2003. In this tidy old faraway place, small lawns without fences mimic 1940's haircuts, shaved just an inch high. Chris Maier mows around his newly painted and shingled two-bedroom ranch house and grows tomatoes, peppers and onions in back. Maier is quick-witted, quick-footed, a little deaf and 91. Yet reaching 91 in Ashley, 100 miles south of Bismarck along two-lane roads, hardly merits a toast.
"My dad was 89," said Mr. Maier, who like most other people here is descended from Germans who fled Russia more than a century ago. "My mother was 87. I got a sister who died last year, a little over 100. I have a brother who is 98 and a brother 87. Another brother died last year. He was 92."
In January, Mr. Maier lost his wife of 67 years after she turned 90. He takes just two over-the-counter painkillers a day, for his sore knees.
Whatever the travails of old farming communities of the Great Plains, with population decline and temperatures that swing 120 degrees from January to July, something about these places produces triple-digitarians even as people plug their arteries with sausage, strudel and dumplings soaked in gravy.
Survivors of scarlet fever and smallpox epidemics, the Dust Bowl and the Depression, they have been cracking 100 at least since 1950. The 2000 census found that McIntosh County, where Ashley is located, had the highest proportion of people 85 and older among the nation's 3,142 counties. North Dakota had the highest proportion among the states.
The census found that Florida, Pennsylvania and West Virginia had higher proportions of people 65 and older. But many of their elderly die in their 60's and 70's; North Dakotans tend to keep aging. The census found 162 North Dakotans 100 or older, also near the top among states in relation to the total population.
These North Dakotans may be biological artifacts, the recipes for their health beyond bottling or replication by baby-boom office dwellers in big cities and suburbs. Clean air; going slow; patience; a low-cost, low-stress economy for all but active younger farmers; decades of heavy lifting outdoors; keeping an eye out for one another; long stable marriages; an absence of sharp differences in income and wealth all may contribute, people here speculate.
Except for houseflies and the volunteer ambulance, nothing much hustles in McIntosh County, population 3,390, and Ashley, its seat. Driving up to intersections awash in prairie dust, cavernous General Motors sedans of the 1970's and 80's linger because no one worries about pulling out first.
Retired wheat farmers and ranchers, now settled in town, can walk the three or four blocks to Ashley Drug, the Super Valu grocery store, the bank, the churches, the Ashley Medical Center (a combined hospital, nursing home and assisted living home), Link's True Value hardware, Kirk's Detour, a bar with ashtrays that no one uses, and the Dakota Family Restaurant.
Every morning at 8, the older men of Ashley gather for 75-cent coffee at a table in the Dakota's front room. Older women gather in a room in back. Until 10 or 11 a.m., they come and go. The women discuss grandchildren, food, health and farming, the men politics, sports, health and farming. They kid a lot.
"These guys came over on the Mayflower," said Jim Carlsen, 72, retired director of emergency services in Sturgis, S.D., and an outcast, he said, as a Swede. "This one came on the Pinta. Schlep, tell him about your relationship with Moses."
But the real business of the tables is watching out for one another. "The cafe is where the networking takes place," Klaes Welch, the county director of social services, said. "If somebody doesn't show up for coffee, it would cause a lot of chatter, and someone will check on him."
One reason for the high numbers of elderly here is that a lot of young people have left. McIntosh County's population slid nearly 16 percent in the 1990's, while North Dakota's hardly grew. But the old who grew up and stayed here also live longer than most other Americans.
A decade ago, the National Center for Health Statistics found that North Dakotans lived to an average of 78, two to three years longer than the national average then. Lately, a look at the McIntosh County courthouse's death certificates shows, lifetimes here frequently stretch past 80.
Last year, 51 people died in the county. A woman reached 100, and a man, 99. Excluding a baby who died at two weeks, 27 women died at an average age of 85, and 23 men died at an average age of 80. Exclude a 41-year-old rancher who froze in a blizzard, and the average was 82. The ancestries of most were recorded, and all but one were German or German-Russian. The exception was a Swede.
"They live longer in the Great Plains States," said Richard M. Suzman, associate director of the Behavioral and Social Research Program at the National Institute on Aging in Washington. "Community and neighborhood are important. So is the level of positive integration, neighborliness, looking out for others. Close-knit communities can be oppressive at one level. But they're also associated with higher life expectancy and better health."
The theory of the "healthy immigrant" might apply here, Dr. Suzman added. Many forebears of McIntosh's elderly were themselves émigrés from Germany to southern Russia. Then, facing conscription into the Russian army in the 1880's, the boldest and hardiest fled to the Plains.
"My great-grandfather walked miles across pasture to stake a claim here," Tony Bender, 44, editor and publisher of the Weekly Ashley Tribune, said.
High school diplomas and college educations are often correlated with longevity. But of the 51 people who died last year, 33 stopped school before the ninth grade and one the woman who died at 100 stopped after the third. Most completed rural elementary school, but were then needed to work on the farms.
Gerontologists say high-fat diets shorten lives, but there is little evidence here that fat, salt, sweets or cholesterol struck down many of these people before 80. Heart disease accounted for three times as many deaths last year as cancer, the second leading cause; diabetes was a factor in 14 of the heart disease deaths. But diabetics died at an average of 83 years; one made it to 98.
Esther Eszlinger, 78, said concerns about calories and fat never intruded upon her meal planning. "You ate what you had," she said. Even today, Mrs. Eszlinger said that like many women, she has two kitchens, the extra one for canning. "You can can sausage. I have peaches and pears, chicken and canned hamburger. I canned wild goose last year. When you come to my house, I can have dinner done in a hurry."
Dr. Udom Tinsa, who grew up in Thailand and has been Ashley's principal doctor for 26 years, said, "The diet surprises me. "They have a high meat diet, but they live long."
A reason, he thinks, is decades of heavy exercise. "They're strong," he said. "They don't sit in an office. They live with nature." After passing farms on to children and moving to town, he said, "they go out to help their children work."
Swatting the air over her coffee, Esther Hildebrand, 78, said, "These kids these days will never amount to much because they don't want to work." She and her husband Clifford, 77, have always kept busy. "Big gardens," she said. "Big yards. We milked 18 cows. Canning. We make our own sauerkraut. I can everything. Pumpkins. We've got stuff in our own food cellar going back to '96."
Wednesday night is German night at the Dakota. Last Wednesday, the menu was two pieces of chicken deep fried to the texture of asphalt shingles, sliced and boiled carrots and potatoes, two fat round dumplings, and strudel, pie or ice cream.
Having finished his dumplings and gnawed his chicken down to dry bone, the Rev. George Rueb was working on a bowl of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.
At 86, retired and twice widowed, he was a little down. "This past January," he said, "I had pneumonia. I was supposed to have a hip replaced, but I had a heart attack. After the heart attack, I was in the hospital again with another pneumonia."
Pastor Rueb was one of 11 children of poor farmers. As a baby, his older sister, fed only mother's and cow's milk, died of starvation. He would have died too, he said, if not for the milk of a horse.
"I was in the seventh grade," he said, "when my dad said, `I need you home.' I did not go to theology school but I took courses at home by mail." As a teenager, he became an assistant to an Assemblies of God pastor. At 20 he began his own congregation. His first marriage lasted 60 years.
McIntosh County makes aging easy. At the Sinclair gas station, the attendant washes windshields. Attendants at the Super Valu carry groceries to cars. Buses from the senior center provide rides to doctors in Bismarck.
With little crime, doors stay unlocked, car keys stay in ignitions. "For my job, there's not a lot of action," said Chief Brooke D. Bundrock, at 26 Ashley's only police officer. "We do a lot of community policing, public service, helping the older people. I had a call where an elderly lady wanted me to shut her neighbors' gate because they were away."
Ashley's elderly live on fixed incomes, and many are poor, but the Social Security check goes a long way. The nightly special at the Dakota is $5.99. Greens fees for a round on the city's nine-hole golf course are $8, or $15 for all day. Rents are low. The county sheriff, Paul J. Peters, who is 26, pays $200 a month for a four-bedroom house with a garage and a large lot for his family of five.
Homes sell for an average of $30,000. "The property tax on that home would be $544.35 a year," Delbert Heil, the county tax director said. Outside the towns of Ashley, Wishek, Lehr and Zeeland, farmers are exempt from property taxes.
In the towns, owners of 197 of the 1,900 homes receive a state homestead credit on property taxes. Those with incomes of less than $8,000 pay nothing, and those with incomes up to $14,000 pay reduced rates.
Because of homeowners' fixed incomes, Mr. Bender, the publisher, said, "it's hard to ask them for more tax dollars." But he said they have gone along with a special tax assessment to fix city streets. After all, they may be still driving on them when they have to be fixed again.
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CAUTION: Though these reports are based on documented studies in professional journals or on advisories from leading university medical schools and research institutes, they are intended for information only and should not be regarded as medical advice or instruction. For diagnosis and treatment of specific symptoms and diseases, disorders or dysfunctions, consult your physician. If you smoke or are over 35 or have symptoms of--or are at risk for--any chronic or degenerative disease, you should check with your doctor before beginning to exercise or making any changes in lifestyle or diet. However, fitness organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine invariably believe that the risk of NOT exercising far exceeds any risk in beginning a gradually increasing program of daily exercise. Thus if you experience any pain or problem while exercising, or making any other lifestyle change, stop and see your doctor at once.